Rule-light, rule-tight and freedom

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 11:37 pm

RelentlessImp wrote:Alternately, talking with bearva is like slamming your dick in a car door - it's painful and idiotic.

No, slamming your dick in a car door is something I might find informative and amusing, and something which wouldn't DERAIL THIS THREAD with worthless fucking chaff.

Yes, even a fucking "Good rules? Are they really a good idea?" can be derailed by idiots responding to that idiot.

How many fucking times STOP TALKING TO SILVA. It wrecks the fucking place up for everyone.

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 11:47 pm

I don't remember where I read the argument, and I'm leaning towards RPGSite, but the gist was that Feats were a terrible introduction to D&D because they codified a bunch of things that martials should have just been able to try to do anyway.

Now, there are some obvious exceptions to that, notably Combat Reflexes. If someone just started claiming that they should attack more often because they have a high Dexterity, I think they'd typically get shut down.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 12:26 am

Stinktopus wrote:but the gist was that Feats were a terrible introduction to D&D because they codified a bunch of things that martials should have just been able to try to do anyway.

Which feats? Give me some examples. As you noted, I strongly doubt that any DM would let you be able to do the stuff that, say, Power Attack, Karmic Strike, Elusive Target, etc. let you do without being able to point to a specific feat. Certainly not any of the cynical numerical bonuses; I'm sure even the most grognardy nostalgia-mutant DM would admit that no DM was going to let you lower the penalty on mounted archery just because you were super-familiar with riding mounts and shooting arrows.

I heard this stupid and insipid observation all of the time and I want to see what people are basing their assumptions on. What kind of shit could 3E D&D martials reliably do before there were codified rules requiring them to jump through hoops for it?

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 12:33 am

Stinktopus wrote:I don't remember where I read the argument, and I'm leaning towards RPGSite, but the gist was that Feats were a terrible introduction to D&D because they codified a bunch of things that martials should have just been able to try to do anyway.

Now, there are some obvious exceptions to that, notably Combat Reflexes. If someone just started claiming that they should attack more often because they have a high Dexterity, I think they'd typically get shut down.

Fighter bonus feats suck, for the most part. And the fact that a fighter has a limited selection and is required to satisfy prerequisites makes them suck worse, and makes the fighter suck worse.

Hypothetically, they let you customize your character. In practice, they turn you into a one-trick wonder who is completely useless otherwise. You dump all of your bonus feats into swordfighting and suddenly your the sword guy, and are completely useless if someone drops a magic lance or whatever.

The idea itself wasn't bad, but the feats thesmelves were terrible.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 1:00 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I heard this stupid and insipid observation all of the time and I want to see what people are basing their assumptions on. What kind of shit could 3E D&D martials reliably do before there were codified rules requiring them to jump through hoops for it?

Generally they're talking about hypotheticals. They probably mention swinging on a chandelier, because that's a thing, but note that there is no feat for that. But generally they mean feats that let you take some kind of special action that, in 2E, you presumably could just do:

-Spring attack: "I run up and hit a guy then jump back". Probably was a thing in the days before the AoO?
-Whirlwind attack: "I attack everyone!" Pretty sure the answer to that is "No you don't".
-The feats that give Spell-Like Abilities: hahaha nice try.
-Some of the tactical feats that let you use a cloak as a shield and stuff? I don't know, maybe?

Alternatively, there are various things like "I am huge, I knock people around with my melee attacks" feel like things that just should be part of the game, but instead require various feats. That wasn't something that happened part way through 3E though.

AcidBlades · Post by **AcidBlades** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 1:09 am

If I wanted a game that regularly commanded that DMs do most of the leg-work. I might as well just freeform roleplay.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:42 am

AcidBlades wrote:If I wanted a game that regularly commanded that DMs do most of the leg-work. I might as well just freeform roleplay.

Care to elaborate more ? Dont know if I got what youre saying here. Thanks.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:13 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I heard this stupid and insipid observation all of the time and I want to see what people are basing their assumptions on. What kind of shit could 3E D&D martials reliably do before there were codified rules requiring them to jump through hoops for it?

The idea is that, instead of introducing feats, most of the stuff that is now a feat should just be "stuff martials can do as a combat maneuver which requires no character investment." AKA a stunt system.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:27 am

That doesn't make any fucking sense, Grek. Are these people saying that having on-demand Power Attack and Spring Attack ruined the fighter because it was repeatable for extra credit a.k.a. feats were too good? Or did they imagine themselves as Mary Tzus who were so imaginative and convincing that if they weren't being cockblocked by the rules they could use their silver tongue to have things like or at least as good as on-demand Power Attack and Spring Attack without having to plop resources down for it?

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:33 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:That doesn't make any fucking sense, Grek. Are these people saying that having on-demand Power Attack and Spring Attack ruined the fighter because it was repeatable for extra credit a.k.a. feats were too good? Or did they imagine themselves as Mary Tzus who were so imaginative and convincing that if they weren't being cockblocked by the rules they could use their silver tongue to have things like or at least as good as on-demand Power Attack and Spring Attack without having to plop resources down for it?

Well, Power Attack most certainly shouldn't be a feat, but would be useful if it were open to everyone as part of the basic combat rules.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:47 am

silva wrote: Don't know if you are answering to me, but I can't see how AW would fall in this category since it makes it crystal clear what its playstyle, themes, tone, etc. are.

It also basically asks you to get together and have a session where you collaborate on mashing together a setting to play in--filling your corebook with promises of sex and violence sets a tone but that's nowhere near as comprehensive as telling people that they will start Waterdeep. Now, personally, I'm not entirely opposed to collaborative setting building, but I would point out that lots of people find world building to be an intimidating or thankless task, which is why the notion that it's easier to find players than dungeon masters is widely regarded as a simple truism. In my experience Bear World starts with one or two people horse trading over setting details then the game pitters out when the rest of the group wants to go back to playing board games, Shadowrun or D&D.

I haven't played Risus or Cortex. I've played Bear World and a ton of Basic, Fate and Fudge variations. A lot of my complaints are intimately tied to my experiences with shitty homebrew because shitty homebrew seems to be what you end up playing when your MC decides that neither he nor the developers should be putting in much effort.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:48 am

No Lago. They're saying that Power Attack should have just been a thing anyone could do by virtue of having a BaB high enough to still hit while Power Attacking, and that all disarms should work like they do with the Improved Disarm feat. Basically, that most of the things WotC made "feats" should just be how things work by default if you're a fighter. By making them things you have to pay out the nose for, it gives DMs the impression that any time a fighter wants a nice thing, they should be forced to spend a class feature for it.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:13 am

Okay, but that's different from a stunt. No one thinks that disarm and sunder are stunts despite them being non-standard things that anyone can do.

hyzmarca wrote:Well, Power Attack most certainly shouldn't be a feat, but would be useful if it were open to everyone as part of the basic combat rules.

Okay, so where do you draw the line then? Should Whirlwind be a basic thing that any martials can do? How about Mounted Combat? How about Elusive Target?

And like it or not, you'll have to draw a line. And you'll have to draw a line pretty early on, too, because:

Grek wrote:Basically, that most of the things WotC made "feats" should just be how things work by default if you're a fighter.

I disagree. While I agree that the list of things that you should be able to default on should be bigger, it will and cannot be anywhere near as big as the list of potential feats people have published. Think about all of the feats that were published in Complete Warrior; now imagine if they were all just things that you can do on a whim without spending any character resources or prerequisites other than BAB. Aside from it being a space clusterfuck, the option paralysis would be completely off the fucking chain.

Grek wrote:By making them things you have to pay out the nose for, it gives DMs the impression that any time a fighter wants a nice thing, they should be forced to spend a class feature for it.

'Nice thing' is a huge equivocation.

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:49 am

Now I'm thinking about how you would go about "grognarding" various feats.

Grognard Edition Close Quarters Fighting:

DM - The Owlbear hits you with both claws, triggering a grapple...

Fighter - But wait! I will (out of turn) brace my sword pommel against my breastplate, so the Owlbear will be unable to bear hug me without impaling itself!

I can see the argument for Power Attack being something anyone can just do, but there are definitely things that I want to see being exclusive to people with specialized training/focus. It's fine for everyone to be able to disarm or sunder, but there should be a mechanical reason for someone to be distinctly better at them than "I described it really well."

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:59 am

@Lago,

Most feats, especially most feats in splatbooks, are just numeric fuckery that adds 0 options. I'm not sure how many of the feats in Complete Warrior would be effected by "make it default." Probably too many, but not by as much as you'd think.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 7:09 am

The objection to feats eating away at play space isn't really valid if you look at core feats. However, the design principle of "make it a feat" really did eat into people's play space something fierce. Let's open Stormwrack, and consider the "stuntlike" feats:

Aquatic Shot This feat "allows" you to use ranged weapons under water at merely insanely crippling penalties. I... was pretty sure I could already do that.
Flying Fish Leap This feat allows you to ignore the -10 penalty for jumping out of water. Did you know there was a -10 penalty for jumping out of water? I did not.
Curling Wave Strike You can trade your bonus attack from Improved Trip for an extra trip attack that doesn't trigger an improved trip attack if it works. That's completely zero sum, and if someone asked to do it without a feat, most DMs would probably let them. But now that there's a feat to make that trade, they definitely can't.
Great Captain While you are captain of a ship, you can use aid another to benefit all the sailors who are doing a thing. Since normally all the sailors just make one roll, it's difficult for me to see how the Captain wouldn't be allowed to just Aid Another that roll without a feat if this feat hadn't been printed.
Old Salt You are allowed to use Profession Sailor to predict the weather while at sea. Seriously? Profession Sailor doesn't already do that?
Sahuagin Flip You can make an attack and then a withdraw action while swimming. Otherwise known as making a tumble check to attack and then move, but whatever.
Sailor's Balance You need to have a bunch of Profession Sailor and Balance... and then you can move at your normal speed on a slippery deck. I'm totally positive that if a character has invested in Profession Fucking Sailor and Balance that if they asked to move normally on a slippery deck of a god damn ship that they would be allowed to do so.
Scourge of the Seas Make an intimidate check against the captain of another ship, and if you succeed, the other ship tries to get away from your ship. I'm almost totally positive that that is how using intimidate against a hostile ship would normally work.

This list is horrible. And the complaint is valid.

-Username17

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:16 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: [*] Sahuagin Flip You can make an attack and then a withdraw action while swimming. Otherwise known as making a tumble check to attack and then move, but whatever.

Nitpick, but tumbling is moving at half speed, while Withdraw allows you to move up to twice your base speed. Getting away 60 feet from your enemy sounds a lot better to me than just 15 feet.

Also tumble costs skill ranks and not all combat dudes even have it as a class skill and you can still roll low and fail at early levels, so Sahuagin Flip would actually be pretty decent if you want to do a hit-and-run aquatic character/NPC and are short in skill points.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:44 pm

@Lago.

1st edition Fighters can clave all day, but only against the sort of opponents they can kill in one hit anyway. 2nd edition kept trying to give them shittier versions of the same thing, so there's some stuff for extra attacks against mooks lying around there too, including whirlwind attacks at high level that just deal out damage in an area.

In both AD&D editions (after UA in '85) they have extra attacks at low level, 2-weapon fighting kicks ass, they can use fighting withdrawals, they can disarm and sunder and trip and all that shit with very high chances of success from middling levels. They can do all that attacking from horseback stuff by just using the normal rules.

Attack and make a half-move retreat? That's the normal AD&D rule! So that the melee could be moved to more favourable defensive positions and such.

Two shots with a bow? That's what a bow does! Most everything you can buy for a fighter in core 3.0 with feats was just something Fighters could do pretty well automatically in AD&D, and usually better than 3e ever allowed by burning a weapon proficiency slot or two. Not to mention that hitting things with a sword was a solid tactic for a very long time.

As far as I can tell, the point of feats was to let classes who aren't Fighters get a subset of the standard Fighter tricks, and non-Wizards some of the standard Wizard tricks. That's all the feats did in core 3.0 D&D. Fighters got dicked. The expansion books were then full of crap that said you needed a feat to throw sand in someone's face, or remove the crazy core penalties on doing normal shit like shield bashes or jumping on someone.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 7:12 pm

Rules light is fine for Maid or Teenagers from Outer Space or Over the Edge. Those games have basic things on your sheet that you can extrapolate ideas on how your character interacts with the world, before the dice are ever touched.

Where AW spits on your freedom is that it calls for rolls for actions that simply employ the motor skills you learned as a child, like "make the words that I just spoke to the GM come out of my character's mouth" or "oppose my thumbs" or "walk along a path that denies line of sight to me using the large objects you JUST described" call for a roll. Meanwhile, the only thing stopping you from Acting Under Fire to pull yourself to the moon by your bootstraps is a million pages of wank devoid not only of rules, but of useful facts about the world.

None of my group wants to play D&D. We're more incline to play a rules-light than Champions, D&D, or GURPS. And most rules-lights are objectively bad. Which makes it important to read the one RPG forum where you're allowed to call a game objectively bad, even if they favor D&D.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 7:16 pm

You know, the more people bash *World games, the more I have to think that they really got their inspiration from fucking Rolemaster.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 7:18 pm

RelentlessImp wrote:You know, the more people bash *World games, the more I have to think that they really got their inspiration from fucking Rolemaster.

That sentence doesn't make sense. Why would people get inspiration to bash *World games from Rolemaster?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jun 22, 2015 3:36 am

Covent wrote:Strike Back

This feat caused a ruckus on the pathfinder boards when it was published, as most people thought you could ready an action to hit say a giant's arm or a kracken's tentacle as it hit you already.

That is certainly my position on the matter from 3e/3.5.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Jun 22, 2015 5:32 am

FrankTrollman wrote: [*] Old Salt You are allowed to use Profession Sailor to predict the weather while at sea. Seriously? Profession Sailor doesn't already do that

No. It doesn't, because that is explicitly Survival. And since that's a DC 15 untrained use with no retry restrictions, the average 1st level commoner always knows the next 48 hours' weather perfectly anyways.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/survival.htm

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:17 pm

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Rules light is fine for Maid or Teenagers from Outer Space or Over the Edge. Those games have basic things on your sheet that you can extrapolate ideas on how your character interacts with the world, before the dice are ever touched.

And.. ? AW has similar things on its char sheets. I cant see what difference there is.

Where AW spits on your freedom is that it calls for rolls for actions that simply employ the motor skills you learned as a child, like "make the words that I just spoke to the GM come out of my character's mouth" or "oppose my thumbs" or "walk along a path that denies line of sight to me using the large objects you JUST described" call for a roll. Meanwhile, the only thing stopping you from Acting Under Fire to pull yourself to the moon by your bootstraps is a million pages of wank devoid not only of rules, but of useful facts about the world.

Huh.. no ? Every action on AW is dependent on the fiction, which must be plausible/realistic by the game very rules. Also: Fictional-positioning. AW (and its hacks) are all about this. You can only make moves when you have positioning in the fiction to do so.

None of my group wants to play D&D. We're more incline to play a rules-light than Champions, D&D, or GURPS. And most rules-lights are objectively bad. Which makes it important to read the one RPG forum where you're allowed to call a game objectively bad, even if they favor D&D.

Why do you think most rules-light are objectively bad ?

*Edit* just to complement, I tend to see rpg rules as tools. "Good" or "Bad" will depend on the kind of "work" you need to do and how such tools feels in your hand. Sometimes a screwdriver will be more appropriate than a hammer and vice-versa. And sometimes a hammer model will feel better at your hand than another hammer model, maybe the handle fits your hand better, or you like the chromed finish of it, or even the heavier weight of the head. All these can be valid factors of the equation. As such, judging rulesets as objectively good or bad seems very difficult to me. (Except Shadowrun, which is shitty no matter what

)

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Mon Jun 22, 2015 11:33 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote: No. It doesn't, because that is explicitly Survival. And since that's a DC 15 untrained use with no retry restrictions, the average 1st level commoner always knows the next 48 hours' weather perfectly anyways.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/survival.htm

D20 SRD wrote:Retries to avoid getting lost in a specific situation or to avoid a specific natural hazard are not allowed.

If a commoner tries to determine the weather, and the weather is going to be anything worse than clear and sunny, then there is no retry allowed.

Besides, there is no "in game" way to tell that you've failed a prediction until the prediction is proven false, hence no trigger for a reroll.